Trump-aligned group launches ad campaign hitting Doug Jones on impeachment

A dark money group aligned with President Trump is launching a seven-figure multistate advertising campaign pushing back on impeachment, with an initial ad buy targeting Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.). 

The group, America First Policies, will roll out the first installment of the campaign Wednesday, with a $450,000 buy in Alabama accusing Jones of aligning himself with the “radical left” and urging him to put an end to impeachment proceedings against Trump. 

“Instead of confirming conservative judges, instead of securing our borders by funding the wall, Jones is siding with them,” a narrator says in the ad, which will debut across media markets in Birmingham, Huntsville, Mobile and Montgomery.

“So call Doug Jones. Tell him to stop standing with the radical left and end impeachment,” the narrator adds.

America First Policies said it was prepared to spend $1 million across three states on the anti-impeachment ad campaign, though the group did not say what other states it planned to target. 

The ad campaign was first reported by Politico.

Jones, a freshman senator who only narrowly won a special election to replace former Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) in 2017, is widely considered the most vulnerable Democratic senator facing reelection in 2020. 

A handful of Republican challengers have already lined up to take him on in the November general election, including Sessions, who is running for the seat again after stepping down to become attorney general. 

Trump remains popular in Alabama, a state he won in 2016 by nearly 28 points. Polling data from Morning Consult shows his job approval in the Yellowhammer State at 59 percent. 

The ad campaign comes as Trump’s impeachment trial gets underway in the Senate. Jones has insisted that he has not yet decided on whether he will vote to remove the president from office or acquit him, though he has criticized Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) handling of the proceedings.

Jones’s press secretary Caroline Stonecipher noted that the Alabama senator had supported more than 70 percent of Trump’s judicial nominees and voted several times for additional border security funding. She said that the ad campaign amounted to “blatant lies” by an outside group.

“This ad is an attempt to distract from Senator Jones’ record of getting things done on behalf of the people of Alabama,” she said. “Anyone who has followed Senator Jones in recent months knows that he is committed to upholding his oath to protect and defend the Constitution, and he has approached this impeachment trial with the seriousness it demands.”

–Updated on Jan. 22 at 8:34 a.m.